


Laughing At Old Grief

by amyfortuna



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Conversations, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 18:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10577073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: Galadriel, soon after her return to Valinor, goes to seek out her Aunt Nerdanel.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is for B2MEM 2017, Red Path, Foresight, and also for Legendarium Ladies April, April 1 prompt, Bonds between women.

The garden was almost completely full of statues, wild and fair. Some of them appeared to be only half-finished, left emerging from the mother stone in a way that faintly suggested birth pangs, faces carved in an ecstasy of agony. Galadriel picked her way through them toward the front door, noting here and there faces she recognised - there Maedhros, hair half over his face, there Amrod, head and shoulders only finished, the rest of him still imprisoned in the rock, there again Fëanor, done in a soft stone that had crumbled away over the years until he was but a faint shadow of himself. 

Glancing about herself, she knocked on the door. "Just a moment!" she heard from within, and footsteps approached. When Nerdanel yanked the door open, Galadriel had to look twice to be sure it was her. Her glorious mane of red-brown hair that used to catch the light in the days of the Trees was streaked with white, and her face was not the happy, carefree face of the Aunt Nerdanel she once knew, but the face of one who has been put to torture. For a moment, she could not help but think of Celebrimbor, the very last time she saw him, eyes urgent and pleading. 

"So you've come home," Nerdanel said, and a smile tried to make its way through the grim mask of her mouth, but did not quite reach her eyes. "Artanis, I'm glad to see you." Her tone almost belied her words, flat and expressionless, but Galadriel could not help but think she was entirely sincere. "Do come in." 

"Aunt," she said, following behind Nerdanel into the dimness of a house that appeared as cluttered with statues as the garden had been, "how long have you been tucked away here?" The little out-of-the-way-house was the last place she had expected to find gregarious Nerdanel, who she could not recall ever before meeting without at least three people surrounding her, and carrying on rapid conversations with all of them at once about various topics. There was always something of the fire in Nerdanel, burning more deeply and steadily than Fëanor's, but still fire that drove her on, that made her able to raise seven sons, have a famous career as a sculptor, and at least in the beginning, keep up with and even exceed Fëanor in knowledge and understanding. And now it was if she were meeting the ashes, cold and white. 

"Since Tyelpë's death," Nerdanel said over her shoulder. Galadriel stopped cold, breathless. 

"That long?" she whispered. Nerdanel turned, putting out her large rough hand to touch Galadriel's wrist. 

"I had enough," she said. "I couldn't handle it any longer - the pretence, the politics, the pitying glances. The tapestries showing every ill deed of my husband and my sons in gorgeous detail, as if the Exiles returning could never stop telling of the depredations my boys committed in the name of those accursed Silmarils. And then, there were the dreams." She turned away again, continuing down the hallway. 

"The dreams?" Galadriel said to her back. Nerdanel just shook her head, and did not reply until they had entered a cluttered living space, dark and dingy, that looked like it had not been cleaned properly in at least a hundred years. 

"I started dreaming about Tyelpë. About 'Annatar'" - she spat the name - "and his claims to be a Maia of Aulë." She sighed suddenly, and bent to clear some papers off a chair. "Sit down, Artanis. Would you like some tea?" Her tone was momentarily just like that of old, as if tea could cure all ills.

Galadriel blinked. "Yes, I would, Aunt." She glanced at the chair but did not sit down. "Would you like a hand?" 

Nerdanel snorted. "The day I can't make tea on my own really is the day I go to lie down in Lórien and never wake. No, no, sit down. You went off to be a queen in Middle-earth and the least I can do is serve you like one." 

"I never was a queen," Galadriel said, but sat down anyway, folding her hands in her lap. 

Nerdanel set the kettle on the fire and got out the sturdy tea cups, undoubtedly made by Caranthir centuries ago, before answering. "Well, that's a comfort. Neither was I, much to my relief. Of all the things I might have been, I feared that the most. If only I had known that a far worse fate was in store for me and mine!" 

"Celebrimbor stood firm unto the very end," Galadriel said. "More than that! He saved us all, gave us the means to preserve the works of our hands and our minds, for a time." 

Nerdanel's face went very still. Spoon in hand, she turned to face Galadriel. "Was it worth the suffering he endured? For he endured more than any of my line, except perhaps Maitimo. And I - here, alone - I endured it with him in dreams - the mad mockery Sauron made of him, the repeated cuts and blows, the -" she let out a sudden huff of air, shoulders slumping, and turned away, letting the spoon fall to the marble counter and ring there like a death-knell. "Was it worth it?" she repeated after a moment, voice very low. 

Galadriel put her head to one side, breathing in. "He believed that it was, of that I am sure," she said after a moment. "And had it not been for the Three -" she held out her hand, where Nenya glimmered openly now - "Sauron's One might never have been destroyed." She stood up, paused for a moment, then walked over to Nerdanel, putting an arm around her. "And yet - after all your family has suffered - it feels so grievous that Tyelpë, who did nothing wrong, should have ended the way he did. He trusted where he should not have, that was all."

"I tried to go to him," Nerdanel said, her voice very low. "Ships still ventured to Númenor in those days, and I made my way to those harbours, but could not leave Valinor. It was as though my feet could not step onto those ships my husband once burned. I lost my chance to ever leave this land when I refused to do so at Fëanáro's request, and now the way is forever closed." She took a deep breath and picked up the spoon, reaching for the honey pot and ladling one small spoonful of honey into each cup, before she spoke again. "When I returned to Tirion after that, I went to your father, and I told him everything. He spoke to the Valar, but they would do...nothing." She looked up at Galadriel. "Middle-earth was to be left on its own, and the Exiles who had chosen to stay were abandoned." 

"But Glorfindel," Galadriel began, and then stopped, taking in a sudden breath. "Glorfindel came to Middle-earth the same way you wanted to go, did he not?" 

Nerdanel shot a glance up at her, keen and cunning as of old. "Oh yes, and who do you think it was who suggested it to him?" 

Galadriel let her arm fall, laughing. "Ah, Aunt! I might have known."

"He came to see me when I still lived in Tirion. My dreams had already begun -- I now know they were foresight -- and I told him of them, begged him to do what he could. He was granted the grace I never had, and allowed to pass through Númenor and go to Middle-earth." 

She handed a cup to Galadriel, and took one for herself, stirring it one final time before laying aside her spoon. "Come, let's sit. I've had enough of remembered woe for now. Artanis, sit with me in the sun, as we used to sit together in Laurelin's light, and tell me of the lands you were never queen of, until I forget all my grief."


End file.
